The Walkers' Trail: California Vacation

It is with much appreciation and happiness that I write the following several posts about our trip to Anaheim and Oceanside, California, during Thanksgiving week. In summer 2013, we started talking about the ideal time to make this iconic trip to experience Disney. We invited my parents to join us, and we set the date and began preparations! Thankfully, our friend is a Disney travel agent, and she was able to suggest ideas and a park itinerary for us to follow, and it was most helpful!

We've been told that the Friday prior to Thanksgiving is a least attended day... which was part of the reason we scheduled during this time. However, open for less than two months is a wonderful Star Wars exhibit and Hyperspace Mountain (formerly Space Mountain) so crowds were larger! It was still wonderful.

I'm going to break up the posts in to the different sections of our trip rather than one huge post. I do realize this post about Disneyland has a zillion pictures - I'd love to apologize, but I just couldn't narrow down our nearly 900 pictures very well! :)

We spent Friday at Disneyland, Saturday at California Adventure, and Sunday was between both parks catching what we missed the first day. We arrived by 7:40 each morning, and left after 10 two nights! We had three busy days full of laughs, line waiting, oohing and ahhing, and fun!

Disneyland - Friday, November 20

Our trip timing enabled us to see all of the gorgeous Christmas decorations.

walking Main Street toward the iconic castle

we rode this twice! Such fun! It was converted to Star Wars and was like we were in a fight in space!

Grant started the morning with a bad headache. Tylenol at the hotel didn't cut it and Jason suggested caffeine. We forced Grant to drink half a coke. He didn't like it at all! :) His headache did go away though!

Reid and I going on a ride by ourselves while the others waited in a line!

This was cool - Star Tours - a 3D (or 4D?) adventure!

Disney carousel!

Seasonal exhibit - Launch Bay

This area had costumes and many items from the movies.

There were three lines for the exhibit - one for the exhibit only, and the other two were Meet-and-Greet lines for Chewbacca and Darth Vader! We all picked Darth!

These were exhibits in his line while waiting.

He was SO wonderful. Acted and sounded just like the movie! The boys (okay - we ALL) thought this was awesome. It was a great way to start off the trip!

Same building - super hero costumes

Next up was for Reid - Spiderman!!! Again, an awesome cast member.

Off to drive cars! Reid and Daddy!

GG and Kyle

Bubba and Grant

I was odd man out this ride!

scenery on Tom Sawyer's (or was it Huck Finn?!) boat ride.

Matterhorn Bobsled ride

It's a Small World

A huge reason we chose Disneyland over Disney World is our family that lives an hour away! We planned the trip and invited ourselves to spend Thanksgiving with them! :) The Cross family joined us at Disneyland for part of the day on Friday. We met up for the afternoon parade, and by this point, it was getting hot and we all ate ice cream!

The boys - 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, (skip a step), 4

If only we'd had Reid two years sooner then it'd be perfect!

Anna and Elsa

Snow White

Belle and Beast

Buzz Lightyear ride

I have heard the term "Disney magic" for years (and a lot from our friend!). I thought "that's sweet, but it's a step up and bigger than our local theme park". No. No, it's not.

It. is. SOOOO. Magical! :)

After just a day there, I was blown away by how WOW nearly everything is at Disney. Each ride is totally different. Each ride's staff has different costumes to match the theme. The ropes used to create the line barriers are unique to the style of ride. IT IS SO CLEAN. The bathrooms were spotless... the grounds were perfect... the sidewalks were shiny and clean. I truly don't know how they do it because there are people all over the place until midnight.

Everything at Disney is perfectly done - it's just magical! :)

I do not have a great photo of our dinner spot, but I would be so sad to forget to mention it. Truly a highlight for all four adults on the trip. Bethany recommended the Blue Bayou Café and suggested to sit "by the water." We walked to the restaurant and knew the Disney pond was across the street. I asked the hostess anyways and she didn't look at me weird when I asked for a water view. We were taken to New Orleans setting, complete with a river inside! It was delicious food, complete with carrot and celery stick appetizers for the kids! We'd go back in a heartbeat!

Waiting for the evening parade to start - the castle at night

It's Mack! Not a Peterbuilt...

King Triton!

Rapunzel

Cinderella

Our first Olaf sighting... until Saturday!

It was apparently an extra-windy night so the nightly fireworks were delayed. We decided to not wait any longer, were leaving, and they started. We stayed to watch. They were so well done. Guess what? They were magical! ha! Tinkerbell flew in the sky!

Reid is mesmerized!

and then he was asleep!

We stayed at a hotel within walking distance (a mile) away from the resort so we had a trek to and from the park each day. All of the boys had great behavior most of the trip, but Reid crashed each night on the walk home (it was after midnight in Oklahoma!)

These are also from Disneyland - just taken on our return trip on Sunday.

Mom and Dad with the castle.

I kid you not - took 32 pictures of us in three locations to get one where we were all looking with a decent smile. This was the last one of the batch!!!

On Sunday, we went to the rides we didn't have time to get to on Friday.

Splash Mountain!!!

Just a picture of each of the boys in line!

We had lunch Sunday at Aladdin's location - it was a quick, yummy meal.

Our Disney day ended with the Fantasmic show!

California Adventure Park

Saturday and a portion of Sunday were spent across the street at this relatively new park. We had really high expectations for it as we'd heard it has Carsland from the movie Cars.
Our highest hopes were blown away...
....with the main Cars ride...

...with the perfect replica of Radiator Springs...

Don't you feel you're in the desert?!? It's just a portion of the Racers ride.

We were able to talk to Mater! He was very friendly! :)

Neat for our kids to see - all of the props from Mater's Tall Tales were on the wall leading to his tractor ride (one of Reid's favorites).

a selfie with Mom!

Mom, Reid and I went on the carousel while the others rode California Screamin' roller coaster. There were only two rides Reid wasn't tall enough to do - this coaster and Tower of Terror. He was fearless on everything else and would have ridden those had they allowed him.

We used our Fast Pass for another ride on Radiator Springs Racers ride. This time, I videoed the entire thing for a memory!

While the boys did Tower of Terror, we looked for something to do for Reid. We thought "Arendelle would be great!"

(it's the town from the movie Frozen for those who don't know!)

Little did we know Olaf was there!

Oh my goodness. He was in heaven!

Reid tried to stay after the photo and talk a lot. The staff finally had to gently encourage him to move along! He was so happy!!!

Arendelle town center - it snowed on us!

We were also able to meet Red, the Radiator Springs fire truck!

Next up was the Frozen sing-a-long!

Most of us were really thrilled to sing with and see our favorite characters from Frozen...

...but some (just one!) were being a big grumpy party pooper for this event!

Pluto

We had an early evening this day and went back to the hotel to catch the second half of the OSU-Baylor game!

We came back on Sunday after getting a little more sleep!

These two love each other! Caught cuddling at Disney!

Another favorite ride of our group was Grizzly River Run - the rapids ride. We rode it two times, and after the second time, Reid found this music man across the street. He happily danced and ran around while he sang for probably five songs.